


Lullaby

by joisbishmyoga



Series: Lullaby [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1196367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began with a song.  A lullaby, in fact, echoing slow and soft in the twilight hours, drifting from the rooms of children after their parents put them to bed.</p><p>The Guardians have long since faced the Boogeyman.  There's far worse out there than nightmares, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It began with a song.  A lullaby, in fact, echoing slow and soft in the twilight hours, drifting from the rooms of children after their parents put them to bed.  
  
 _Look for the boy with sad blue eyes._  
  
It began in Tokyo.  In the narrow and winding back streets, rising up between the concrete ravines of towering apartment buildings, haunting and sad in the flickering shadows where the moon couldn't shine.  
  
 _Riding a horse of fire and ice._  
  
It bloomed like ink in water, welling up across Japan, in Brazil, in Ohio and Hawaii and California, in China and the Phillippines, and spread.  
  
 _He comes to find you in the night._  
  
Which was when Baby Tooth took the matter to Jack Frost.  
  
"A kidnapper?" Jack echoed, the tiny fairy chirping worriedly in his cupped hands.  "I dunno, Baby.  Wouldn't it be 'mad blue eyes' if it was evil?"  Baby squeaked at him, waving a little fist imperiously, and he hunched into himself.  "All right, all right, I'll look into it.  It started in Tokyo, right?"  
  
Baby Tooth cheeped an emphatic 'yes'.  
  
-0-0-0  
  
There was a storm going in the mountains just northwest of Tokyo.  It wasn't quite where Jack was supposed to be looking -- the story's epicenter was Tokyo proper -- but there was a hint of telltale power to the snow, something aloof and unconcerned rather than malicious, and it would be a lot easier to make contact with it than to just go barging in right off the bat.  
  
Jack had tried to find spirits in megacities before.  It didn't work too well; plenty of them existed, of course, and they got along fine with people like North (man-made _everything_ ) and Tooth and Sandy (human-oriented powers).  They didn't take nearly so well to, say, Jack, what with the frosted power lines and frozen plumbing and annual potholes.  
  
(Sometimes the kids giggled going 'boink!' in the car.  That was Jack's story and he was sticking to it.)  
  
The woman at the center of the storm was tall and whipcord thin, nearly emaciated; she had a pot-lid hat of winter rushes weather-worn to gray, gauzy veils hanging from the brim; a kimono trailing billowing sleeves and sash in snowy whites, patterns of ice cracks at the hems; and, just barely visible under the veils, a ponytail and eyes the blue-black of arctic seawater.  
  
When Jack touched lightly down on her rooftop, one elegant hand drifted down, the whistling breezes going quiet with it.  
  
"Dare ka?" she asked, in a voice like wind through broken reeds.  
  
That sounded like a 'who are you', so,  "Jack Frost," Jack said, and bowed.  
  
Her brows came together.  "Jyaki... Furo-suto...?"  Her hat tipped, veils drifting, as she visibly eyed him up and down.  Then she scoffed faintly.  "Jyaki no Fuyu, jitsu ga."  
  
"... Okay, yeah, Jyaki."  Close enough.  
  
Another measuring pause.  "Jyaki Fuyu-san wa nihongo o wakarimasu ka?"  
  
He'd managed to figure out 'who', but that question was way too long to guess at.  "Sorry, I have no clue what you're saying."  Jack grinned sheepishly, clutching at his staff.  "I don't suppose you know any English?"  
  
"Saa, wakarimasen."  She shook her head, more as if agreeing with something she'd already thought than telling Jack 'no'.  "Kagami-ni-san o hitsuyoda."  She turned half away, gesturing Jack in the same direction.  "Ikimasu kudasai."  
  
 _That looks like a 'come with me'._   Jack shouldered his staff.  "Okay.  Lead on, milady."  
  
She stepped onto a razor-thin leaf of ice, floating at the edge of the rooftop, and floated up into the sky.  But she didn't lead him into Tokyo.  Just over the mountain ridge, there was a larger town, and she drifted to the sidewalk before the doors to a department store.  
  
"Douzo," she murmured, again gesturing him to come along, and they slipped in on the designer heels of a woman in a long black wool coat.  
  
They went up the escalators, with Jack twitching at the impulse to surf on the moving handrail, and then into a home goods department.  One short aisle held decorative mirrors in all sorts of frames, sleek black and overwrought gilded and carved wood, silver spiked and sunburst round, and the snow spirit stopped before the largest.  
  
"Kagami-ni-san, himitsu aikousha," she purred to her veiled reflection.  "Himitsu o sashiagemasu."  One long-nailed finger traced over the mirror's center.  "Himitsu o sashiagemasu."  Then she leaned in, parting her veils, and breathed, "Himitsu o sashiagemasu," a third time, the mirror fogging up under cool breath, except where a complex character showed the lines of her tracing.  
  
When the mirror cleared, a man all in white peered back.  
  
Jack blinked.  The top hat, the white suit, the flowing cape and bright monocle...  "You!"  
  
The man -- Jack's favorite, the mystery focus for joy and fun that had caught his attention on his first trip to Tokyo decades ago, the man who'd vanished just five short years later -- tilted his head.  "My reputation precedes me," he said lightly, happily, with the faintest hint of a British accent.  
  
Oh thank goodness.  "You speak English!"  Oh, and "Actually, I kinda saw you a few times before..." Jack flapped a hand at the mirror and the whole oh-hey-now-you're-a-spirit thing.  "What reputation?"  
  
The man's grin sharpened just a little bit.  "Oh, nothing.  Before, hm?"  Amused blue eyes flicked to the snow woman.  "Yukionna-dono," he said, bowing.  "Doumo arigato gozaimasu.  Kongo wa, kono otoko o atsukaimasu."  Then something sly slid over his expression.  "Himitsu... o kudasaimasen kereba ka?"  
  
She flicked open a nearly-translucent fan in front of her face, looking quickly away.  "Saa... sore ga..."  
  
"Nan demo nai," the man in the mirror replied, before reaching out towards Jack.  "Come in?"  
  
"In?" Jack echoed, but gamely pressed his hand to the mirror's surface.  
  
He gasped when suede gloves yanked him through.  
  
-0-0-0  
  
There were suede-gloved hands clamped around Jack's wrists, and sharded shadows in his eyes, all of them something like a steel-and-glass Escher print, and everything seemed to be slowly spinning without moving an inch.  He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing hard.  
  
"Sorry, it's a bit non-Euclidean in here," the man apologized.  "You've got enough ice and moon in you that you shouldn't get sick off anything else about it, though."  
  
Carefully, Jack winched one eye open.  The only spot of true color here caught his eye, blue shirt and red tie and the face of someone who didn't get much sun.  
  
"Better?"  
  
"Maybe a little."  As long as he didn't look past the man.  
  
The man's grin gentled a little bit.  "Excellent.  Welcome to my humble abode," he said, sweeping his cape to the side and bowing just enough to be noticeable while still blocking most of the view.  "I go by Kaitou Kid, or Kid the Phantom Thief, or," something quirked at the corner of his mouth, "just Kaito or Kid.  I also may or may not answer to 'hey you', 'bloody wanker', and a number of Japanese epithets that I doubt you know."  
  
Jack grinned.  "Well, Kid.  I'm Jack Frost.  I'm also known as the Guardian of Joy, and may or may not answer to Frostbite, Snowball, and a few growls and cheeps that I'm not sure can be made with a human throat."  
  
"Ooh, I _am_ in exalted company."  Jack winced (exalted company?  Him?  No, he was just good ol' Jack of Snow Days and Snowball Fights) but Kid simply waved that off.  "So, Jack Frost.  What brings you here to Tokyo?  Snowstormus Interruptus doesn't seem like you."  
  
Well, no.  "It's not," Jack admitted.  "A friend of mine picked up on a rumor making the rounds among the kids, some sort of magical kidnapper?"  Kid's smile flattened out, so Jack added,  "The rumor's epicenter is here, so."  
  
"Hm.  I've not heard about a kidnapper, but... how's the story go, do you know?"  
  
It had been difficult to translate from Baby Tooth's piping calls, but, "Yeah, pretty much.  It's a nursery rhyme, goes," Jack cleared his throat, " _Look for the boy with sad blue eyes, riding a horse of fire and ice.  He comes to find you in the night_."  Then, "It kinda feels unfinished, but that's what I've got."  
  
Kid's own blue eyes were wide and round.  "I'd say.  That's pretty much a direct translation of _Kanashii no Aome-kun_ , but you're missing the fourth line entirely."  He thought a moment, murmuring rhythmically under his breath, then nodded.  "It should end with _He's the last you'll see til the monster dies_."  
  
Wait, what?  
  
" _Kanashii no Aome-kun o miharu.  Koori to hi no umaninoru.  Yoru ni kodomo o tsukesaru.  Oni wa shine mae ni o miru_ ," Kid chanted, sobering.  "He's no kidnapper, Frost-san."  
  
"Then what...?"  Some sort of monster hunter?  A new spirit fighting nightmares and Pitch all alone?  
  
But Kid's eyes were as sad as the rhyme's.  "Some children need more than Christmas presents and sweet dreams."  And he pulled Jack deeper into the shining Escher world.  
  
-0-0-0  
  
They stepped out into a dank cave, cold and oppressive with the weight of stone above, and almost entirely silent.  Somewhere, water dripped, faint and maddening; somewhere, dim light glistened onto the rippled rock wall.  
  
Jack's fingers clenched on his staff.  This place seemed oddly familiar...  
  
"This way," Kid murmured, pulling Jack out of the shadowy alcove where a vein of hematite had let them through.  
  
The corridor was floored in loose, ankle-twisting rubble, some deceptively smooth to skid out from under the feet of the unwary, some flattened slabs like pavestones waiting to tip someone off of them, and far too many sharp-edged for falling to be at all safe.  Kid skipped easily across them like they were all cemented in place, and after the third attempt to slice Jack's feet off, Jack floated in his grip and let himself be towed behind.  
  
Only a few twists of the tunnel, and a hint of warmth brushed over Jack's face.  Another turn brought them to a heavy wooden door, splintered planks and spiked hardware, paint worn to some indistinct grimy noncolor flaking freely away.  In the cracks, Jack could see flickering firelight.  
  
 _Tap tap._   "Meitantei?" Kid murmured, and a low, comforting hum came to a halt.  
  
Something rustled behind the door.  "Douzo," came the reply, soft and worn thin.  Jack couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman's voice, hovering somewhere in between.  The rhyme had said 'boy'...  
  
The room inside was warm and cozy, thick Oriental rugs and massive pseudo-medieval tapestries -- unicorns, ladies, forests, bards, lambs, all in greens and deep blues without a single hunter or monster to be seen -- hiding the cold stone.  In the far corner, an overstuffed couch piled high with pillows and blankets overlooked the room; in the opposite corner, a slender black horse lay curled up, blue fire burning coolly from its hooves, mane, and tail.  
  
Next to the hearth, a wingback chair sat across from a simple rocker, where a petite, cloaked figure was bottle-feeding a tiny infant.  
  
"Hey," Kid said, as he entered the room, Jack hovering uncertainly behind him.  "Slow night?"  
  
The figure sighed.  "It never is," he replied in perfect American English, raising his head to show blue eyes behind massive glasses that Jack hadn't seen for nearly fifty years.  Not since...  
  
 _Jack dropped out of the sky and barely managed to freeze the coming avalanche solid before it could break free._  
  
 _The kid fell to his knees, breathing hard, and so close that Jack could see the hope die in his eyes._  
  
 _"Kuso..." the boy breathed.  Then, "KUSO!!!" and he was clearly cursing, punching the ground, tears dripping to freeze on his glasses._  
  
 _And that was when Jack recognized the sensation of a million gallons of icewater tearing the valley apart._  
  
"Oh my god," Jack whispered.  
  
He'd let the avalanche go.  The kid had survived, barely, by scarce seconds and a lot of luck, but then he _kept doing it._   Pulling dangerous, self-sacrificing stunts to rescue people... to rescue children, so often it was children... every time Jack saw him, for years.  
  
Until Jack had blown through Tokyo one year, a scarce five years after the first time, and the boy had disappeared.  
  
"Here," the boy said, offering the infant and its bottle up to Kid.  "I can't... I don't have time, but he's starving..."  
  
"I've got him," Kid said softly, letting the boy settle the infant in his cupped arms.  The baby whimpered, but settled quickly when the bottle didn't get taken away.  "How old is he?"  
  
"A year, I think?"    
  
The baby didn't look more than about six months, at his size, but that wasn't the face of a six-month-old.  Jack's hands clutched at his staff.  Literal starving.  Months of no food, a lifetime of it, and the so-called kidnapper had... had...  
  
"I've got to go," the boy said, voice breaking.  
  
"Meitantei."  Kid rested his forehead against the boy's.  "Shin'ichi.  I've got this one."  It seemed, for just a moment, like Kid's mouth had to brush against Shin'ichi's forehead.  "Go."  
  
Shin'ichi clicked at the horse in the corner, which picked itself up and trotted over happily, hooves not quite touching the floor.  Taking its reins, he dropped a quick kiss on the baby's downy head, then left.  
  
Kaito settled himself into the rocking chair, rocking gently as the baby slurped at the bottle.  "Shh, shh.  Nennen korori yo, okorori yo..." he crooned, some quiet lullaby Jack didn't understand.  
  
Slowly, Jack collapsed into the matching wingback.  Frost curled out across the worn fabric, thinner on the firelit arm than the rest.  "He's rescuing them," he said hoarsely.  "Hungry children..."  
  
"Starved, beaten, molested," Kaito murmured, in the lullaby's tune.  "All the children he can find, all the children he can reach."  
  
Jack swallowed, eyes burning.  He could do the math.  North barely managed with two nights -- Catholic and Orthodox Christmas were thirteen days apart -- and only about a third of the world's children believing in him, and he had yeti and elves doing most of the work.  Bunny, with similar numbers, barely managed either, and his two Easters could be the same day or they could be up to five weeks apart.   Tooth had thousands of fairies and a division of mice, and Sandy could spread his sand for hundreds of miles and generate more from thin air.  
  
Shin'ichi had to find and rescue every child personally.  
  
"It's never enough, is it," Jack asked.  
  
Kaito shook his head.


	2. Chapter 2

The problem was, that Jack had the sinking feeling he'd been to Shin'ichi's caves before.

It was ridiculous. There were thousands of miles of cave systems all around the world, dark dank places where water dripped maddeningly and the ground was nothing but precarious rubble. Surely there were enough places where light got reflected and reflected through some small, glistening crack to cast a sourceless glow from the dripping walls, or possibly was lit by something microscopic and bioluminescent. Surely the ancient door had been hauled in by Kid, or by Shin'ichi, sometime early on, and they'd never bothered to replace it with nice things the way they had with the furniture. Why would they, when all it was there for was to keep the warmth of the hearth in?

But Jack somehow felt that he'd been there before. And the cave system had looked nothing like Bunny's mossy, flowery burrows.

The abandoned bedstead in an old clearing near Burgess was little more than an outline of rust and a few peels of paint anymore. What paint hadn't been taken by bowerbirds was a grungy, colorless brownish gray, almost lost in the leaves and grimy litter strewn about the clearing.

Jack swallowed hard. He didn't fear this place, exactly, and he certainly didn't hate it (Pitch had hurt Bunny, kidnapped the fairies, lured Jack in and terrorized him for what seemed like minutes instead of hours, but he'd also _lost_ to them) but he didn't like the area at all. It just felt so joyless.

The hole to Pitch's lair was narrow and uneven, a gaping crack in the ground barely large enough to fit Jack, rather than the perfect round burrow hole it had been in '12. Jack wriggled through, getting scrapes on his stomach and back where his hoodie rode up, and landed in a crouch on the dusty tunnel floor.

To his left, the tunnel wound into darkness tinged with the sour reek of fear-sweat. To his right...

Music. A violin, faint and slowly crooning through a melody that -- as Jack floated that way over the rough stone, and the tune became distinct from its echoes -- sounded vaguely familiar. Something old, something un-Pitch-like (not that Pitch seemed the type to play an instrument), something... feminine, somehow? Power and color and decades old, something that brought to mind bright little faces and stocky little girls. Cupcake's daughters and grandchildren, who'd loved to watch an old favorite with her...

_Fighting evil by moonlight..._

Definitely not a Pitch song.

Jack found himself humming, despite the oppressive darkness and the promise of... what? If Shin'ichi was the player, if he was here... Did he ever take a break? Somehow Jack couldn't picture it, not when so much was at stake, so if Shin'ichi was here... someone small and probably hurt was listening.

... _always there to defend._..

And there was the worn-out wooden door. It stood unlatched, creaking ever-so-faintly in the slight breezes around Jack, and he slipped easily inside.

Shin'ichi was draped in the wingback tonight, his hooded coat missing and a violin set tiredly on his shoulder. Eyes half-lidded and lost, he played as if he'd forgotten the violin was there. On the couch off to his side...

In Jack's hood, something tiny squawked and jerked free, and a tiny iridescent-blue bullet went streaking past his face, shrieking in tiny outrage.

Pitch yelped and jerked away from the little girl asleep under Shin'ichi's coat, and the violin screeched to silence.

"What--?" Shin'ichi twisted to look at Pitch -- _at Pitch_ , as if he saw the Boogeyman!

"Just a bug," Pitch hissed, fending off Baby Tooth's furious attacks. "Ow! Little rat!"

Shin'ichi stumbled out of his chair. "It stings? Keep it away--"

"I know, I know!" And Pitch froze, stiff but not iced over, with the crook of Jack's staff at his throat. Baby Tooth hovered before the Boogeyman's face, needle-like beak aimed impeccably at his eyes. "Shin'ichi. Stay. Very. Still."

"I don't see it." But Shin'ichi didn't move. "Is it... the girl, is she...?"

"Fine. Let's just keep quiet and calm here," Pitch murmured, hands up and eyes pinned to Jack's. "We've no wish to wake her."

Jack sucked in a breath through his teeth. Nightmares. She had to be...

"No, you're right," Shin'ichi said quietly. "This is no place to wake in." Then -- as Jack noticed the black grains trickling slowly out of the girl's hair, and Baby Tooth buzzed furiously closer -- he continued, "Can we catch it before it stings her?"

"I believe," Pitch managed to barely sneer the word, "that we may manage to shoo it out. Eventually. If we don't alarm it." He paused. "And it's highly unlikely a sleeping child will do so."

"You had better talk fast, Pitch," Jack hissed. "And get your nightmare sand off that child, before we do something you'll regret."

Pitch made a show of relaxing slightly. "I do believe it's attracted to the scent of the sand I'm harvesting. Not planting."

Behind them, Shin'ichi sighed. "Right. Of course."

Pitch frowned. "Don't be doing this now, please, Shin'ichi. I rather prefer that you've more company than upset, sleeping children."

"Dreaming," Shin'ichi muttered, before turning back to his violin. He lifted it, light reflecting off the polished wood, and set bow to strings. This time he stayed standing, and the tune that came out...

Jack flinched at the pain in it, tears pricking at his eyes.

Pitch sighed. "And we're back to not seeing me. Infuriating little ghost."

" _Pitch._ "

"Well, at least we may speak freely now." Pitch let his hands fall. "Do call off your pet tooth, Jack. I'm certain we can behave like civilized adults here, without such threats."

Baby Tooth said something harsh and piping, and Jack didn't move his staff an inch.

Another sigh. "What did you need explained?"

"Nightmare sand. Off the child. First."

"What did you think I was _doing?_ " Pitch growled. At their disbelief -- Baby Tooth scoffing openly -- he glared. "I don't need to create nightmares for one of Shin'ichi's children. They've lived enough of them that I can harvest their terror directly."

Jack faltered. He... really wanted to believe that. To believe in Shin'ichi, and in Kaito... but it was _Pitch._

But with as much sand as was streaming from the child's head, she should be screaming herself awake by now. Shouldn't she? But -- Jack risked a glance -- she wasn't. She lay trustingly, openly, completely relaxed, and what shapes the sand made were of slender flare-skirted girls blasting vaguely human monsters to pieces.

Slowly, Jack's staff eased away from Pitch's throat.

Pitch stared in unabashed shock. "You... are the most _naive_ little..." he sputtered.

Maybe so. But, "Fun and Joy," Jack replied. "You can't really have either without trust. So." He stepped back, gesturing with the crook. "Harvesting, you said."

Pitch's hands lowered slowly, until his taloned fingertips just brushed against the swirls of girl-shape and the sand rose in a stream. It leapt from one hand to the other, a long skein twisting in on itself like spinning yarn, passing through his curled fingers and beginning to take form again in the darkened shadow of Shin'ichi's chair.

It took only seconds for the first long-legged, gangly colt to stumble free. It was tiny and awkward, its armor plates looking more like folded velvet and its eyes glowing an infant green, and when it mouthed uncertainly at the air there were no blackened fangs in its mouth.

Pitch clicked his tongue, and the flowing sand nudged the colt towards Shin'ichi's flame-maned horse to nurse.

"This isn't really helping your case, Pitch."

"They must come from somewhere, Jack," Pitch said, watching a second colt form, this one more slowly. "And I don't particularly care to starve." The sand looped around his shoulders, almost comfortingly, and he made a face. "As it turns out, I need not cover the world in darkness to sustain myself. Blame the twentieth century's population explosion."

"Which happened before 2012," Jack pointed out.

"It took a while to adapt." One tendril of the sand balled itself up, bounced off Pitch's head. "... And a few rather heated philosophical discussions when Shin'ichi was in the mood. One rather more effective for not coming from some moon-blinded bastion of good cheer and quick judgements."

Jack bristled -- excuse him, his core was 'good cheer' and his judgement might not've been so 'quick' if Pitch hadn't been kidnapping fairies and trying to murder Guardians right and left! -- but before he could say anything, Shin'ichi sighed and set his violin aside.

"About time someone called social services," he muttered. "Here we go again." And he walked right through Pitch and the flowing nightmare sand.

As Shin'ichi gently took his hooded coat off the little girl, shaking it out and putting it on, Jack gaped at Pitch. "I thought he could see you."

"In case you hadn't noticed, it comes and goes," Pitch choked out acidly, one hand fisted in the lapels of his robe. "Misbegotten Moon do I hate that."

Jack almost wanted to ask if Pitch was okay. Which was stupid because he knew exactly how it felt and how fast the feeling wore off (physically, instantly; emotionally... not so much). Intead, though, Jack just instinctively angled himself out of Shin'ichi's way before he could get walked through as well.

"Comes and goes, huh?" Jack murmured, watching Shin'ichi cradle the child and lift her, still sleeping, from the couch.

Shin'ichi's coat was oversized enough on his small frame that, with the little girl curled in his arms, he could still use the open lapels as an effective blanket for her. He clicked at his horse, which nudged the two colts away and rolled to its stomach, then Shin'ichi mounted the horse's bare back, tapped it to stand, and in a flick of blue-fire mane and tail, horse and riders were gone.

When he looked back, Pitch was staring almost forlornly at the spot where the horse had left. "He doesn't believe in magic, you understand."

_Doesn't believe in...?_ Well that made some sense, being a youth of the early 21st century, but surely he had to notice himself doing mundanely impossible things, like being twelve for nearly sixty years? His horse's burning mane and ability to disappear?

"He believes in horror," Pitch continued. "And in people causing it -- which is apparently close enough to believing in a Boogeyman for him to see me -- and in himself and his ability to save them. But whenever I do something the slightest bit too magical for him to accept..." Pitch gestured an eloquent 'poof!', something that made the back of Jack's throat burn faintly with bile. "Once again, I cannot exist," he said with a bitter, resigned smile.

Jack swallowed. Fun and Joy. _What happens when someone's happiness is so twisted in on itself that it comes right back out the other side? Like what's the word, schadenfraude?_ But that was about other people, right? Pitch's usual Joy was schadenfraude, this was more masochism. Amused at his own pain. But whatever the word was, Jack suddenly _knew_.

He could taste it. Not quite in his belly.

He _hated_ it.

So he leaned on his staff, peering up at Pitch under his bangs. "You know, if it helps..." _please help please please help_ , "I'm always gonna believe in you, right?"

Baby Tooth chirped in disgruntled agreement.

And slowly, as fragile and thin as first frost, something very like joy trickled through the sense of Pitch in Jack's mind.


	3. Chapter 3

  
Jack was poking holes in the jet stream for the polar vortex to break loose when the aurora went off right over his head.  
  
By the time he dug himself out of the snowdrift and found his dropped staff, he was late enough that he buzzed Bunny coming in for a landing, and only barely beat Toothiana inside.  Sandy was already there, shining gold in a corner near the aurora signal's console, and North was visibly seething at its foot.  
  
Two steps into the room, Bunny and Tooth a warm and buzzing presence at Jack's shoulders respectively, and North growled, " _Naughty List is gone_!"  
  
"What?!"  
  
"Ushel!" North snapped.  "Ukradennyy!  _Stolen_!"  Tooth gasped, and North finished, "And _cannot check Naughty List for perpetrator_!"  
  
Jack couldn't help it.  This was serious, he knew, but, "Catch-22," he said under Bunny's horrified sputtering.  North's glower shot to him, and Jack quickly covered with, "So any idea how the guy got in?  You've got this place locked up like a sultan's only daughter."  
  
"You'd know," Bunny muttered behind him.  
  
"So would you," Jack shot back, just as quietly.  "I know aaaaaaaall about your tries to open the tunnels inside where it's warm, instead of on the ridge."  
  
Bunny made a face at him, which soured when North said, "Will never work, Bunny."  Then large hands clapped on Jack's and Bunny's shoulders, pushing lightly.  "Come.  I show you all vault."  And he steered them out of the Workshop.  
  
The living quarters of North's place were much more secure than the Workshop, all long paneled hallways and cozy rooms, many with hearths instead of windows, to help with keeping serviceable sleeping cycles during the endless daylight of arctic summers.  Squirreled deeply away in the windowless core of the living quarters, past lab after lab of top-secret developments -- in magic, in toys, and in Santa's gear since things like the sleigh didn't invent themselves -- past North's weapons collection gallery, deep under the furnace, there was a short hallway ending in a round vault door, all polished steel and brass fittings that looked like it had been cut out of a different stage setting and plopped into North's.  
  
"All steel!" North proclaimed, as he spun the door's spoked-wheel latch.  "Six inches thick!  Cast in one piece, extensive magical process, very hush-hush and all notes gone.  And yet!"  He pulled the door open to blazing light.  
  
When Jack managed to blink the spots from his eyes, he blinked once again.  Bright as a summer's day, spotlights shining at every angle to cut off all shadows, the interior of the vault looked oddly like everything was floating.  The wood shelving, the brass fixtures, the glass cases with their golden chains... none of it looked quite real.  
  
Prominently in the center of the room stood a pedestal, its glass-topped case locked, chained, lit up, and half-full.  The single scroll remaining in the case, thicker than North's arm, had his tattoo's same ornate NICE inked on its surface, and a gaping space below.  
  
"Gone!" North proclaimed.  
  
As Sandy floated up the image of a large box, darting single grains of sand to bounce off it, Bunny stepped cautiously inside, nose twitching.  "Mind if I...?" he asked, not bothering to get an answer before he knelt by the scroll's case.  One stubby finger nudged at the padlock.  "I'm not seeing so much as a lockpick scratch here," he muttered.  
  
"And no shadows for Pitch to take advantage of," Tooth said, fluttering up high in the corner.  "I don't think.  No dirt, either, it's remarkably shiny up here.  If only you took such good care of your teeth as you did of this vault, North--!"  
  
Shiny.  Jack eyed the glass cases, the gleaming metal, the bright light sparkling from every surface...  
  
Crap.  
  
"Hey, North, how do I get to the bathroom around here?"  
  
North shot a distinctly grumpy, un-Santa-like look over his shoulder, though his eyes gentled a bit on Jack.  "Back upstairs, past all labs, make left.  Follow smell of pine fresh."  
  
Because making a bathroom smell like candy was probably just gross.  "Okay.  Be right back."  And Jack hurried off.  
  
He didn't use the toilet.  Instead, once he found the small room and locked the door behind him, he turned to the mirror over the sink, a carved-and-painted wooden edifice of nutcrackers and ballerinas.  
  
One slim finger traced at the edge of his reflection.  "Tell the man in the mirror what you did, what you've done," Jack murmured.  "He listens to horror, he listens to fun.  When your teddy tells tales and you just need someone, the man in the mirror won't tell anyone."  He met his own gaze.  One.  "I have a secret."  Two.  "I have a secret."  Three.  "I have a secret... for you."  
  
His reflection wavered, white and pale and blue, and changed.  
  
Kaito Kid smiled kindly out at him, gloved fingertips a thin layer of glass under Jack's own.  "Jyaki Fuyu-san!" he purred.  "Presents?  For me?"  
  
Jack couldn't match his smile.  "I know who stole the Naughty List."  
  
The grin fell away.  "And you want to know why," Kid said, somber.  
  
Jack nodded.  
  
"Well, it's not really policy to spill secrets, but..."  
  
-0-0-0  
  
"Ow, Frostbite, watch the sleeting!" Bunny yelped when Jack returned.  "'M not exactly in my winter best here!"  
  
Jack's grin felt brittle and forced, as did his joints when he spun his staff and leaned not-so-casually on it, ignoring Bunny.  "Sooooo.  You want the who, the how, or the why?"  
  
North's eyes went wide.  Stomp. Stomp.  "WHO. AND. WHERE?"  
  
"Yeah that's a 'why'."  He felt the grin fall off his face, saw Tooth and Bunny recoil in the corners of his vision.  "Did you know, North.  100% of abused children commit at least one act of sibling abuse every year."  
  
It was almost as if the man had run smack into a wall of frozen fish when he was expecting a Mongol army.  Jack watched North sputter, choke, and go several different colors, before settling on a strange pallor accented by bright red cheeks.  "Abuse...?" North managed to choke out.  
  
"Did you also know, the Naughty List explains _why someone is on it_?"  
  
"Da, I make change after '12, but you stay on for pranks and mayhem --"  North went completely white.  "-- So I never look further."  
  
"I know someone, who knows someone, who travels through reflections."  Jack tapped the nearest gleaming bit of metal with the base of his staff.  "And he's the only friend of a spirit who's been rescuing abused children for sixty years."  
  
Tooth made a strangled little sound as she sank to the floor.  
  
"He never keeps what he steals," Jack added, the world feeling oddly cool and distant.  Who cared that the Guardians wouldn't be able to untangle who Jack was talking about?  No, best to keep Kaito and Shin'ichi hidden until people were ready to see sense.  "You'll get the Naughty List back when he's done with it."


	4. Chapter 4

Jack was hip-deep in fresh snow by the time anyone braved the elements to fetch him back inside. Even then, it was Sandy who set tiny hands on his shoulders and steered him into the mudroom, swirling sand brushing chunks of ice from Jack's head and neck.  
  
Bunny slid one furred foot delicately away from the quickly-melting slush on the mudroom's floor. "Jackie. Frostbite." Sand streamed away from under Bunny's grip, as the Easter Bunny bent just enough to look Jack dead in the eye. "You still in there?"  
  
"... Yes," Jack murmured, quiet and hollow, all his ice and snow blown out. "It's. I don't understand," he said, gaze lifting. "The fairies. The googies. Sandy's sand..."  
  
"If we could've helped like that, we would've. Ages ago." Bunny's whiskers drooped. "It's one of the drawbacks of belief, mate. It makes us powerful, yes. No other spirit can cover the world in a night." His fingers tightened. "But it also limits us. The kids don't think the sand tells Sandy how they are, so it doesn't. They don't think the Tooth Fairy does anything but swap coins for teeth... so she's probably sent fairies after hundreds of teeth knocked out by parents, but it doesn't register. My googies..." Bunny made a sick, pained little sound in his throat. "I send them out, and they never come back.  
  
"North, though." His expression hardened. "Believe you me, Jackie, I'm gonna be having a chinwag with him. Between his lists and the letters kids write, they believe he can do all sorts of impossible things and he should _ruddy well know about it by now_."  
  
Behind them came a heavy, pained sigh. "Da, I know."  
  
The temperature in the mudroom plummeted.  
  
"I rescue children, once," North continued, rubbing his face with one hand. "Many centuries ago. Terrible conditions. Live in _sewage_ ," he hissed, accent thickening with emotion, "sell little selves, freeze to death by Christmas! So I take many, so many, bring to Workshop. And then..." he opened his hands helplessly. "What do you think happened? Cannot return children -- there was no place to put them! But cannot have adults in Workshop, they lose belief, cannot see shelter, cannot feel warm fire, freeze to death at North Pole, da? So you would think, but no."  
  
Jack, Bunny, and Sandy all blinked. "... No?" Jack ventured.  
  
"No. Magic happens, magic I cannot touch. I do nothing, watch helpless as children change!" And he bent, plucking an elf out of a passing swarm. "Play all day, put things in mouths, eat everything in sight, few words, much mess. You see how tiny child remains?"  
  
Bunny made a sudden, horrified sound deep in his throat, which Jack echoed a half-second later at the memory of kicking a couple of the little elves out of the way.  
  
North nodded, and let the wriggling elf slide back to the floor, where it scampered off and vanished. "I cannot take children, so I change work. Bring gifts and wonder, yes, but make bigger! Make better! Make stronger, more lasting! And slowly, slowly, change begins. Children grow up with lingering wonder, lingering innocence, little twinkle-light stars in their eyes, and begin to think of protecting that for all. It becomes illegal to beat children, to throw out on street, to," North swallowed, "to take them to beds. Still happens, yes, crime always still happens, but now adults work to stop it."  
  
He stomped his feet, cracking his boots free of the creeping ice. "Is not enough. Is never enough."  
  
_It's never enough, is it._  
  
_Kaito shook his head._  
  
"But you see problem with rescuing children?" North asked. "Jack. We must know what spirit is doing with children after rescue."  
  
"He's not--!" Jack bit back the rest of the sentence. He didn't know what Shin'ichi did, after leaving Pitch with new nightmares.  
  
"Of course, he is not," North said. "But, elf." He made a little gesture towards the floors. "Process is set much faster than is noticed. Please summon your friend of reflections."  
  
Jack grimaced, but they had a point. A quick look around -- and an absent pull on his magic to make the ice around Bunny's ankles crumble ("brr, thanks mate") -- and he zeroed in on a polished copper strip inset like a chair rail around the room. "Tell the man in the mirror what you did, what you've done..." he murmured.  
  
In the tiny, golden reflection, he could see a shiver bristle up Bunny's fur and perk his ears. He covered Bunny's face with his hand, fingertips resting lightly on the bright metal, and as he finished the rhyme, he leaned in. "I have a secret... for you," he breathed, misting over his reflection.  
  
It cleared to a tiny image of Kid.  
  
"I got you an invite," Jack told him, before Kid could say anything. "Come on through?" _Please_.  
  
Gloved fingers gripped his tight, and Jack closed his eyes as Kid eeled out of a space that should've been too narrow for anything more than his hand. Behind him, he heard Bunny make a pained little sound, which meant he'd been watching as non-Euclidean space opened up around Kid.  
  
"Sorry about that," Kid said. "Jyaki Fuyu-kun, good to see you."  
  
Jack couldn't help but smile just a little, as Kid's other hand joined the one already clasped warmly around Jack's. "Likewise."  
  
Kid's grin widened just a little at that. "That bodes well for me! It's not every day I'm summoned to see the bigwigs. Come, come, introductions all around, yes?"  
  
Right. "S--"  
  
"No, no, let me guess." Kid flapped a hand at Jack, and something invisible settled lightly over his mouth. It wasn't particularly strong, whatever it was, but Jack could tell it would take a bit of effort to break. "Santa Claus, I know of," he continued with a slight, courtly bow. "Very popular even in my lifetime."  
  
"Nicholas St. North," North said. "Charmed."  
  
"So quickly! My prowess amazes even myself sometimes." Kid turned one bright eye on Sandy. "Now I don't have much to go on, here -- Jyaki and I tend to discuss my work, not his, so I'm afraid my sources are a bit biased, but... Surfer god's beachy little brother?"  
  
Sandy stared, question marks forming over his head. One turned into a small child tossing restlessly in bed, then a shimmer of sand sprinkled over the genderless little form and it stilled, little z's floating up.  
  
"Is Sanderson Mansnoozie," North explained. "Sandman. Brings good dreams."  
  
A moment later, Sandy blinked, and all the sand reared up to make a dog, teats heavy with milk. But Kid didn't notice Sandy's fuming glare, instead turning his attention to Bunny. "As for you... hm."  
  
Bunny's muzzle twitched.  
  
"Aha." Kid snapped his fingers. "Furry's wet dream."  
  
North, Bunny, and Jack all choked, and Jack broke through the light silencing geas. "I take it you're a little mad at us," he managed to say.  
  
Kid turned his smirk on Jack. "Juuuuust a bit," he replied, fingers held a centimeter or so apart.  
  
One meaty hand landed on Kid's shoulder. "Come, then. We explain why," North told him. "Then ask what mystery spirit does with children."  
  
For just a moment, Kid's open bewilderment made him look painfully young. "He... takes them to hospitals?"  
  
Something in the set of North's shoulders relaxed. "Then is not emergency. We have hot chocolate, discussion, become friendly." ("Not bloody likely," Bunny muttered, Sandy's sand hissing in dire agreement.)  
  
Once settled in one of North's many cozy parlor rooms -- all of them with furniture sized and overstuffed to fit yeti rather than humans -- and plied with cider, cocoa, or eggnog according to choice, North lured an elf out from behind the furniture with a plate of cookies.  
  
Kid offered one curled hand for it to sniff, then, when it didn't bite, picked it up curiously. "Well, hey there," he said.  
  
"This one was..." North peered at the little face, chipmunk-cheeked and covered in crumbs. "... Mairead, I believe. Edinburgh Old Town, 1773. Found on street near Nor Loch, up to knees in filthy gutter. Grown-up homeless had taken up cleaner parts of alley, prostitutes were working up against walls. Looked at me like I hung the moon when I gave her oatcake. How could I leave her there?"  
  
Kid went very, very still, his only movement his fingers scritching the elf under her chin. After a long moment, he exhaled slowly. "Natural result of keeping a kid too long?" he asked.  
  
"Da."  
  
"How long is too long?"  
  
"I'm not sure," North admitted. "Time variable... well, is variable, depends on moon. Next full."  
  
"Hm." Kid considered that for a long moment. Then he raised a finger. "What if a kid is rescued at the full moon?" A second finger went up. "How long is a full moon?" A third. "What if a kid's rescued during the day?" A fourth. "What if the moonlight is blocked?"  
  
North's brow furrowed. "... Full moon magic is three days. Seventy-two hours, thirty-six before and thirty-six after exact full."  
  
"Unacceptable," Kid snapped. "That's nearly a tenth of the month."  
  
"Do not be shooting messenger," North replied just as sharply. "Is only answer I have."  
  
In the chair between Jack and the fire, Bunny snorted. "Not quite the only answer, old man," he muttered sourly. "We all know one place where the moon's magic is blocked, don't we." Jack twitched violently, half-empty cup sloshing onto the carpet, as Bunny's face went even more bitter. "Can't exactly be taking kids _there_ , though."  
  
"Where?" Kid asked with entirely too much innocence. The elf escaped from his gentle grip, gleefully pouncing the floor, and Kid stood to pry the carpeting out of her mouth. "Hey, no, sweetheart. That's dirty." He tapped her pug nose, getting a gurgle and a snap at the cocoa-stained rug in his fingers. "No."  
  
"Would've thought you'd run into him before," Bunny said. Little golden images of nightmares and a hawk-nosed figure loomed over Sandy's head. "Pitch Black. King of Fear, Lord of Nightmares, cackling psychopath trying to resurrect the Dark Ages and cover the world in terror. Can't believe he hasn't been lurking under abused kids' beds waiting for scraps."  
  
Kid kindly dropped the elf into a bowl of party mix. "That explains so much."  
  
"You've met him?!" Bunny's chair hit the floor.  
  
"Met isn't quite the term I'd use," Kid mused. A silver pocketwatch puffed into existence in his hand, and he glanced inside it. "He's quite the grumpy conversationalist. Dear me look at the time." He flashed the interior, a blank mirror, at them with a cutting grin. "It's siblings o'clock! I'm afraid I have a pressing appointment, to -- what's the phrase -- see a man about a horse. Good evening, gentlemen." And with a press of his thumb to the mirrored surface, he flashed bright silver and vanished.  
  
The watch fell to the carpeted floor with a thump.  
  
Slowly, Jack picked it up. There, engraved under the silver lid, was inscribed:  
  
_Look in the light from no yellow sun_  
Look with the eyes from no righteous face  
Look for the found who know only of loss  
Then will I show those answers you seek


	5. Chapter 5

  
A couple of fruitless weeks later, Jack was out somewhere vaguely in Kansas or perhaps Nebraska, ushering a small storm across the plains and -- although the storm was no tornado and he wasn't entirely sure he actually was in Kansas -- humming the Wicked Witch's theme song, when he saw the shadowy rider galloping across the winds.  
  
Oh no.  
  
Jack dropped the storm (it was far enough along that it wouldn't go too much off the rails without him) and followed.  
  
If it hadn't been winter, or Shin'ichi hadn't been all in blacks and deep blues, Jack would've lost him. As it was, he nearly did anyway every time the white plains were cut by a strip of dark forest, lacy with snow coating the sparse branches. Then the land gave way to a sheet of ice: a lake long since frozen over, miles long and shimmering as wind gusted ragged arcs of snow across the surface. Jack could barely keep up as Shin'ichi's horse sank to the ground, galloping hooves striking up blue sparks and chips of ice.  
  
Just as a massive dam loomed up out of the blowing snow, Shin'ichi ducked lower over his horse's neck, and it raced back into the air. The Wind threw Jack up after them, and he caught a glimpse of horse and rider following the road, just before Shin'ichi arrowed straight into another stand of trees instead of following the road's curve.  
  
 _Crap, crap, crap!_ Jack thought. He'd fallen behind. He'd lost--  
  
No. He could just see the blocky shape of a house on the far side of the trees. The back side, no visible garage and a deck buried knee-deep in snow. Was this the right...?  
  
Some strange sense of Joy hovered around the home, Jack noticed, as he carefully approached. Upstairs, far right window, and it snapped off like something had hacked right through it just as Jack peeked inside.  
  
Just as Jack saw the woman collapsing, unconscious, atop the child on the bed.  
  
He hit the ground hard, dry heaves making him wish he ate often enough to be violently sick, or could vomit up every drop of her pleasure, because --  
  
 _Starved, beaten, molested,_ Kaito sang softly in his memory.  
  
\-- because --  
  
Jack spat one last mouthful of bitter bile into the snowdrift, and, as he blinked tears from his eyes, the horse and rider galloped straight through the wall, a story above him. There were tiny football-printed toes peeking out from under Shin'ichi's oversized coat. _Away. Get away from her. Get away from here._ A sudden urgency gripped him. _NOW!_  
  
The storm he'd left behind hit the house like an avalanche.  
  
-0-0-0  
  
Jack let the storm slingshot him across the next state, faster than the Wind could usually carry him, and eventually caught sight of a pale wedge high over the sparsely-lit plains on the far side of the Mississippi river. Blue fire flickered alongside it, Shin'ichi otherwise invisible against the deepening twilight; within minutes, the glider tilted, Kaito glancing over his shoulder.  
  
One white-clad arm snapped upwards, and in a blast of silvery glitter, horse and glider vanished.  
  
Who did Kaito think he was?!  
  
Fine.  
  
FINE.  
  
Jack knew where they were going anyway.  
  
-0-0-0  
  
The storm had hours before it reached Burgess, and all the children were asleep, when Jack wrestled himself through the jagged crack into Pitch's lair. Snow blew in behind him, frost crackling up the walls and ice freezing all the rubble into place, as Jack marched down the tunnel branch towards Shin'ichi's side of the caverns.  
  
Ignore the flickering shadows. Ignore the oppressive stone. Ignore the remaining sour burn in his throat. Jack had to be able to do something. He had to. He--  
  
" _Jackson Overland just what do you think you are doing?!_ "  
  
His mother's voice stopped Jack in his tracks. Pitch grabbed hold of the shepherd's crook, looming over him from out of nowhere. "What are you doing here, Jack Frost?" he snarled.  
  
Wasn't it obvious? "I--"  
  
"Breaking into my home. Again." One gray, taloned finger jabbed at Jack's nose. "To gawk at a child like some animal in a zoo."  
  
What blood Jack had left drained from his face. No. No no no. That wasn't. He. No.  
  
"There." Pitch settled his hackles, his grip now steady instead of white-knuckled-furious. "Now that you're not in blind flight, that's... let's see... ah, no wonder," he purred. "Fear of living off a child molester's pleasures. My my, Jack, I thought the old man had taught you a bit more magical theory than that."  
  
Jack swayed. "I... what?" What?  
  
Pitch ducked under Jack's arm, propping him upright. "This needs tea. Come into my parlor, then."  
  
"Spider," Jack muttered, but let Pitch drag him through a shadow -- clammy tendrils clutching unpleasantly at him -- and into a small room that looked like the Addams Family had mix-and-matched from Tim Burton's movie sets.  
  
Pitch settled Jack onto a sofa that had clearly been converted from a coffin, a worn black with satin upholstery long since yellowed. Then he stepped over to a potbellied cast-iron stove in the corner -- which gave off heat but hardly any light -- and put a kettle on.  
  
Jack stared blankly as Pitch returned with a tea tray (more of the iron, the pot chased with pewter-edged dragons and set over a tea light, and the cups made of china in some charcoal-on-black glaze). There were three cups, and Pitch filled all three before taking his own seat on a rocking chair that creaked alarmingly.  
  
"... Thanks," Jack mumbled. He took one of the remaining cups, but only watched the steam curling up.  
  
Pitch sipped at his tea. "If I," he said slowly, thoughtfully, "were to lock you up with a rapist --" Jack very nearly dropped his cup, "-- molester, rapist, let's not kid ourselves that there's that much difference -- and a steady supply of victims, you would suffer a slow, horrific, and quite agonizing death."  
  
At Jack's stricken silence, Pitch continued, "It would be much the same as if I only had haunted houses and horror movies to live on. It's a tainted sort of sustenance, ersatz and poison." He met Jack's eyes evenly. "You and I are perhaps the only ones with such a problem, come to think of it. There is no such thing as tainted wonder -- those who explain the wonders of the universe come to marvel at the explanations -- and we've seen what occurs when I attempt to subvert dreams or memories." Something rueful ghosted over his face.  
  
"Hope..." Pitch looked away once again. "Hope is... unassailable, in that way. Where North's wonder has no opposite, Hope is... well. Possibility. If one hopes something is true, or not as the case may be, then one has to acknowledge that you might be wrong. That spring won't come again and the crops will fail, as in 1816." After a long moment, he blinked back to himself. "But the damn rabbit's Hope also means that you know something has to change. The worse off one is, the more likely change means an improvement. Take the extreme of hopelessness, the suicidal." Pitch gestured with one long hand. "They do not? They have, somewhere, deep down, a single spark of hope that something will be worth not bothering to die one more day. They make the attempt? They have that hope that not existing would be better. Quite frustrating. Your tea should be cold enough to drink by now."  
  
Jack drank mostly on automatic.  
  
"I'm afraid you'll always notice that sort of pleasure," Pitch said. "I didn't take much exposure to recognize the difference in my own prey, so you can probably assuage your heroic tendencies easily by icing the source. Just a suggestion."  
  
Something tight and heavy in Jack's gut unknotted itself. "Yeah. Yeah, I can do that." He could help. He could actually, finally, do something to help.  
  
This time he could actually taste the chamomile in the tea, a flavor that was slightly like frost-tinged apples and slightly like spring flowers. "I still can't believe you drink this stuff," Jack said, just because.  
  
"I pretend it's the blood of my enemies," Pitch replied dryly.  
  
Jack blew a raspberry at him, then switched his drained cup for the fresh (cold) one, and flopped back over the coffin-couch as Pitch refilled the old cup. "So you'll like this, North's throwing ten kinds of fit up at the Pole."  
  
"Mm? Whyever for?"  
  
"I told you about the Naughty List, right?" Pitch narrowed his eyes, and Jack hastily said, "Forget I said that. Anyway. Kaito was really ticked at them all when they met, and left behind a riddle instead of the answers North wanted about things like... well... you." Jack grinned. "And all the little details about who Shin'ichi is, how he works, all that stuff. So North's up there stomping around the Workshop, swearing in Russian and trying all sorts of different lamps on Kaito's watch."  
  
Pitch blinked. "What, that old pocketwatch he stuck a mirror in?"  
  
"That's the one. You ever seen the inscription?" Pitch shook his head. "It goes _'Look in the light from no yellow sun, look with the eyes from no righteous face, look for the found who know only of loss, then will I show the answers you seek'_. Or something like that. They've all been stuck on the first line for nearly a month."  
  
Pitch actually smiled, mock-sighing as he rested his head on his free hand. "Now I truly despair of your education."  
  
"... Well, you know, North's busy and all.."  
  
"Lamps, you said?"  
  
"Moonlight," Jack began ticking off on his fingers. "Starlight, firelight, candlelight, oil lamps, half a dozen different kinds of lightbulbs, light spells from pretty much every culture he's got a book for, and a bunch of different glowy plants and animals that Bunny has to fetch." He couldn't help but snicker a little. "I wish I'd had a camera when he came back with the Hawaiian squid; he was soaking wet and had tentacles coming out his ears." Which had been hilarious, with the ruffs on Bunny's face plastered to his cheeks making him look like a horse from the neck up. Hilarious until everybody else had freaked out and bundled him straight to the infirmary for a week. Turned out a wet rabbit was a dangerously hypothermic one. There'd been cuddlepiles. " _Anyway_. The mirror doesn't so much as flicker. Why?"  
  
"Because the answer's quite obvious, Jack." Pitch's smile widened, teeth flashing as some smug glee welled up from him. "Basic science. One of many things fundamentalists and anti-intellectuals are terrified of. To use the light of no yellow sun, on Earth, means obviously one cannot use sunlight. However," he raised a finger, "Moonlight is reflected sunlight. Starlight is the light from thousands of stars, many of which are a match for this one. Wood, oils, and bioluminescence all rely on living or once-living things, which gained their energy from sunlight or through various and sundry food chains back to sunlight. Even magelight and electricity are too rooted in humanity, mystically speaking, to be exempt from the food chains. Therefore," the finger ticked one way, "Either one must use the bioluminescence of certain abyssal marine life -- to which I might mention that Kaito is _deliciously_ terrified of fish and would never use that for a key, not to mention the sheer impossibility of surviving the pressure to obtain any -- or," the finger ticked in the other direction, "One must look in the mirror in... if you'll pardon the pun... pitch blackness."  
  
Seriously? "But you can't see anything in the dark."  
  
"That may rather be the point."


	6. Chapter 6

Jack was going to take Pitch’s suggestion straight to North.  Really.  Honest.  Only he caught a glimpse of a calendar on his way out of Burgess, and, well…  
  
“Frostbite, the hell you doing hiding under a rock in my garden?” Bunny asked.  His watering can dribbled a few droplets on Jack’s nose, freezing solid as Bunny bent to peer at him, ignoring Jack’s frantic ‘shoo, shoo!’ gestures.  “It’s the middle of winter.  Shouldn’t you be up north wrecking school days and building snow forts?”  
  
“This is completely not my fault,” Jack hissed, “and I’ll be back to it in a week, just go away and pretend I don’t exist.”  
  
Bunny’s eyebrow shot upward.  “Jackie?"  
  
“And also you should maybe batten down the hatches and check the wards, just a thought, nothing to do with why I’m here, though your security sucks by the way.”  
  
Bunny’s other eyebrow joined the first, and the watering can landed with a thump in the mud.  “That sounds an awful lot like you’re being chased by something," he said, crouching.  
  
“Nope.  Not at all.”  A long moment, as Jack wilted under Bunny’s stare, then, “Nothing big.  It’s just.”  Why did he hide here again?  He should’ve gone to Tooth’s.  Or North’s, North had amazing wards against exactly this because of Befana Strega.  Great friend, terrible girlfriend.  “... Valentine’s.”  
  
Bunny snorted.  “You know Cupid’s usually good about not targeting spirits, right?”  Jack couldn’t answer.  “... Jack.  What did you do to Cupid?”  
  
“I’m just an innocent bystander here!”  Yeah, that sounded ridiculous even to Jack.  “You know he likes to target people who’re… available.  Right?”  
  
“Yeeees?”  
  
“And, um, teenagers.  And people with a crush.”  Oops, bad move.  “And maybe kind of sort of people who might’ve 68’d his holiday once.  Or twice.”  Bunny’s whiskers twitched.  “... A decade.”  
  
So all those hearts and flowers happened to annoy Jack a little.  Love should be an all-year effort, not a one-day spectacle.  More importantly, all that hype made everyone else depressed over being single, or divorced or widowed, and it especially upset the little kids who’d lost a parent.  
  
68’ing things didn’t help, but sometimes Jack just got fed up with it all.  Which.  Well.  68.  
  
Bunny’s whiskers were twitching a little harder now.  “Y’know the charm’s only good for about seven months, right?”  
  
Wait, what?  “...No?”  That first time Cupid got him, back in the twenties, hadn’t worn off yet.  
  
“It’s just a charm,” Bunny said, and now the twitching was clearly stifled laughter.  “Ya get a whirlwind summer romance and it’s usually no harm done.  Or people fall in love for real, but the charm doesn’t do much but poke you in the tail and say ‘look’.”  
  
Jack swallowed.    
  
“But that doesn’t mean my security sucks,” Bunny finished, finally taking pity on Jack and smirking.  “I can’t afford to be all lovestruck in the rush towards Easter.  C’mon, let’s get you out of the mud and washed off.”  
  
A bath in front of Bunny?  "Nope.  Your security sucks.  I got in easy enough, didn't I."  
  
" _You_ did.  You're not Cupid.  My security is fine, Jackie."  
  
"Actually..."  
  
Jack and Bunny both yelped at the new voice, Jack whacking his head on the stone above him while Bunny whipped out a boomerang and spun, hovering protectively in front of Jack's rock.  Between his furry feet, Jack saw...  
  
"Kaito.  What're you doing here?"  He hadn't thought any of Guardians would see Kid until they'd figured out his weird riddle.  "I thought you were mad at us."  
  
“Mostly at Santa,” Kid replied easily.  He stepped down off a low, flat rock, polished shoes deftly avoiding the silvery moss spilling off its surface.  His cape fluttered around his calves as he turned slowly, consideringly.  “It’s a lovely place you have here.  Love the sun charms.  Do they do rain too?”  
  
“What…?  Thank you, yes, but what do you think you’re doing here?” Bunny sputtered.  “How did you get in?  I’m sure I don’t have a single damned shiny thing--”  
  
“Secret.”  Kid shook a finger chidingly, absently, as he continued to scan the Warren.  “Rock towers, frowny totems… that stream's only, what, five centimeters deep?  Good, good…”  
  
Bunny leaned in close over Jack.  “He always this rude?”  
  
Kid answered before Jack could.  “He can hear you.  And no, usually I’m a bit more mannerly than this.  What’s the capacity here?”  
  
“All right, you’ve had your fun.  Enigmatic bastard.  Let’s have some explanations before I kick you outta me Warren.”  
  
After a long moment, Kid sighed, and dragged his gaze away from the horizon.  “We have the Naughty List,” he said slowly, as if to a particularly stubborn student.  Bunny's ears went flat.  “The List has several. hundred. thousand. names on it.  Over fifteen percent of them need rescued.”  He paused, monocle flashing in the Warren’s dim golden light.  “We also have facilities for four.  Do the math.”  
  
Neither Bunny nor Jack needed to.  “I’m not blocked from moon magic here,” Bunny pointed out.  
  
“... My center is Secrets,” Kid offered reluctantly.  
  
“... The Warren’s meant to hold a million.”  
  
Slowly, Kid grinned.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Once Bunny and the sentinel eggs had set to cleaning out the Warren's long-unused rooms, Jack left with Kid.  Turned out the secret entrance was through the handle of Bunny's battered old watering can, the aluminum polished to a mirror-bright shine from centuries of use.  
  
"So,"Jack said.  "How are you guys going to manage getting hundreds of thousands of kids, anyway?"  
  
"That's right.  You haven't met my minions yet, have you?"  
  
"Minions?"  
  
Kid touched down lightly on the edge of a shard the size of a car, rotating slowly among the labyrinthine curls of smoke and mirrors, and gestured at the world Jack had very carefully not been looking at.  Something gritty and dull floated free from his hand in a long arc.  
  
Out of the smoke came meowing, and out of the meowing came cats.  Broad and insubstantial, fluffy and stubby, they coalesced out of the mists -- ten, twenty, fifty, hundreds -- and swarmed them both.  Kid quickly wound up hip-deep in purring cub-like cats, coiling around his legs and rubbing against his scritching fingers, and slinking daintily out of the air to chase his hat into the ether.  The smallest, a kitten the size of a tennis ball, entangled herself into Kid's dangling monocle charm.  
  
"Yes, yes, precious.  Catnip for everybody.  No evil creepy snackies today, though."  
  
Jack reached out with one curled-under hand, getting several of the nearest cats to sniff warily at his fingers.  “What kind of cats are they?” he asked.  They didn’t look much like housecats.  Too big and fluffy.  But they weren’t lynxes, snow leopards or tigers, or mountain lions, nor were they any of the tropical cats he’d seen in zoos.  Plus they were made out of smoke.  
  
“Bakeneko.”  Kid rolled his palms an inch apart from each other, glowing points of sparkly, fuzzy light balling up in the space between.  With a bright, cheerful jingle of bells, he tossed them into the distance and all the cats went racing off in hot pursuit.  “The ghosts of murdered cats.  Executed for the crime of, well, being a cat and therefore having magical potential.”  He gently disentangled the last kitten remaining from where it was chewing on his monocle charm.  “Our stories aren’t happy, Jyaki.  Death and magic, secrets and wisdom.  We resonate with each other… with your Bunny, too, more than he’d want to admit.”  The kitten mewled, high and peeping, and batted at Kid’s nose.  “Yes, you’ll be his too, if he ever wakes up enough to see you,” Kid cooed.  
  
“Bunny’s about life, though, I thought…?”  Jack knew that much, springtime and eggs and the way flowers sprouted in Bunny’s wake every time he popped into a tunnel.  Also normal rabbits (and almost everything else) mated in the spring.  
  
He didn’t think Bunny personally went into rut.  (Not that he ever thought about it.)  But Jack had spent most of his life around farms and forests, and he wasn’t blind.  
  
Kid circled one finger in the air.  “Cycles, Jyaki.  From life, death.  From death, life.  You resonate with it too, you know.”  
  
“... Well, I did die.”  
  
Kid paused, blinking at him.  Then he cocked his head, and suddenly, the scarcest sense of his existence flickered in Jack’s sense of Joy.  “Would it be too cliche to point out that you also sparkle in bright light?”  
  
“I’m not that kind of vampire,” Jack replied, Kid’s amusement enough to lighten Jack’s own mood and let him drop the topic of resonances.  “And I know exactly who you’re casting as that girl.”  
  
Kid grinned.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Instead of Pitch’s, or some shiny patch of ice somewhere, Kid dropped Jack off at North’s.  
  
“Hey, rugrats,” Jack said, chuckling, to the elves swirling around his ankles.  They were looking for treats, due to Jack’s new habit of dropping crumbs and trinkets (mostly pennies, found lost on sidewalks worldwide), but this time he didn’t have anything.  Though he waved his staff and dusted them all with his special snowflakes, starting a wave of giggles rippling through the throng.  “Where’s the big guy?”  
  
Nobody answered, though the giggling roughened as elves got distracted or started squabbling.  Then one elf latched onto Jack’s ankle and nibbled lightly at his calf.  
  
“Ow, ow--” the little face was familiar.  “Mairead?  Ow.  Not nice.”  
  
“Thbbpt.”  
  
“Treats if you take me to North.”  
  
She considered that for a moment, then pointed one stubby finger vaguely upwards and across the Workshop.  
  
“Off we go, then!”  
  
He lost Mairead to a passing Yeti with a gingerbread dollhouse (complete with chubby marzipan figures carrying in cookie furniture and candy decorations; several gaps and bite marks in the icing showed where the house had already been attacked by voracious elves).  The poor Yeti just grumbled and hefted the gingerbread higher, as the little elf joined the swarm already in hot pursuit.  
  
A couple of turns later, Jack found North in the cozy conference bay.  
  
“Mass rescue’s a go as soon as spring cleaning’s finished,” Jack announced cheerfully, “and Kid would like to borrow the yeti for crowd control, assuming they’re any good with kids.  Any progress on the riddle?”  
  
“Nyet.”  
  
“Oooookay.”  Jack spun his staff lazily, letting it land on his shoulders as he bent forward.  “So.  I was hanging out near this school during science class, and it occurred to me…”  North gave him a look that was decidedly not filled with Wonder.  “All the energy on Earth’s all reflected sunlight and photosynthesis, right?”  
  
“Arguably,” North replied.  “Difference is more profound in magic.”  
  
“Weeeell.  Kid was full-human around the turn of the millenium.  The magician thing’s more clever tricks and applied sciences than mystic stuff for him.  So maybe…?”  
  
North’s brow furrowed.  “Maybe all light does not work?”  He paused as Jack shrugged.  “But we cannot see in dark.”  Another pause, then he slapped his knee and shoved himself out of his cushy chair.  “We try it.  Take five minutes, is no trouble to check.”  
  
There was a small closet off the conference area, just large enough to fit a yeti comfortably and lined with shelves of gaming supplies and reference books.  Jack and North had plenty of room to spare, huddled around the closed pocketwatch in North’s hand.  
  
When North clicked it open, the air bloomed with soft, silvery light.  As Jack peered closer, spotting movement deep under the glass, North sighed in defeat.  
  
“Was nice thought, Jack.”  
  
“What?”  Jack caught at North’s hand, fingertips light against muscled flesh, before the Russian could close the watch back up.  “You can’t see it?”  
  
“See what?  Told you, cannot see in dark.”  
  
“No, no, the light…” Which caught faintly at the etched riddle.  _Look with the eyes from no righteous face_.  “It’s glowing, very softly… you can’t see it?”  
  
“Hm.”  North loomed over Jack, eyes unfocused as he scrunched his face back and forth.  Squinting, winking, comically wide… “I see nothing.  What do you see?”  
  
Deep in the tiny mirror, Pitch ran gentle fingers across Shin’ichi’s head, then wrinkled his nose and swooped down, taking a sleeping, bandaged toddler from unresisting arms.  He stepped over to a table half-hidden behind the door, opened a cupboard over it, and…  “Ah.  Diaper duty.”  
  
“Kid’s friend?”  
  
Close enough.  “Yup.  I can see right into the room where they take the rescued kids.  Looks like Kid needs to steal more diapers, though, they’re almost out.”  
  
North snorted.  “Most wondrous gift of all for new parents.  Have Yeti show you where I keep care packages.”  Then his face fell.  “Why can’t I see anything?”  
  
“Probably the rest of the verse,” Jack replied.  “I’ve filled all the conditions.  Somehow.”  
  
“Look with eyes from no righteous face,” North quoted.  “Is nonsense, should be looking with eyes from elbow?  No.”  
  
“Yeah, I don’t get that either.”  Maybe he should ask Kid for a hint.  He might even catch the guy at Pitch’s if he hurried.  “Welp.  Good luck with that.”  Jack clapped North on the shoulder.  “I’m gonna go raid the diaper stores.”  
  
“Remember wipes!” North called after him as he left the closet.  “And rash cream!”  
  
And formula and a bag of holding +10, Jack thought, as he headed off into the Workshop.  
  
He found Phil easily enough, grumbling over a paint palette that was refusing to wash out of his fur.  “Hey Phil.  Got in an order for… let’s see…”  Oh, why not.  “All the diapers.  And stuff.”  
  
Phil frowned.  
  
“I dunno, Bunny probably needs everything, but he’s nowhere near ready yet, so I figured I’d refill Kid’s supplies.”  
  
“Grfrbh?”  
  
“He’s down to like three diapers.  But I should only need about a week’s worth?  How many’s that?”  
  
Phil began to count on his fingers, then paused.  “Nt.”  
  
“For one or two kids at a time, but mostly toilet-trained?”  That got Jack a headshake, then Phil pulled him out to the balcony overlooking the Workshop’s atrium and pointed.  “310 days til Christmas,” Jack read aloud.  “So what?”  
  
“Nt.  Nstr gabhdh--”  Phil pointed at the ticking date countdown again, then brushed a thumb down, then across, on Jack’s forehead.  
  
Whatever that meant.  “No idea.  But okay, February, countdown, crossmark _oh crap Easter._ ”  
  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Jack found Kid again more by luck than design, following the faintest scent of silver and glass in the otherwise trackless deserts of southern Australia.  Bunny's Warren lay hidden deep under Kid's polished white shoes; he'd told Jack once, when Jack asked where all the water trickling out of the walls came from, that he'd built it on the very westernmost tip of an aquifer that lay under nearly a quarter the continent, under a miles-wide vein of opals that caught and scattered light from... and here Bunny had gone on for ten minutes about color spectrums and diffraction, technical magic stuff, some long-deceased and pointedly unlamented Scottish knight, and Jack had tuned out for a while.  
  
But that was then, and this was now, and Jack had found the one thing for miles that didn't smell of dust and dry grass.  Excepting himself of course.    
  
He landed next to Kid with a thump that sent up a puff of thick, reddish dust, which didn't leave so much as a speck on Kid's pristine cape.  
  
Kid opened one blue eye to peer at Jack.  "Konban wa," he murmured, gloved hands moving gently in the air as if playing an unseen piano.  The very faintest wisps of silvery mist floated down from his palms, drifting through his fingers only to settle above the ground and vanish.  
  
"Hey."  Jack swung his staff over his shoulders.  "I refilled your guys' closet with diapers and formula, but Phil -- the yeti, you met him yet?  -- pointed out we've got a problem."  
  
"Mm.  Please don't alarm me unduly, Jyaki-san," Kid murmured dreamily.  "This is delicate work."  
  
"Trying not to.  It's not unfixable, it's just.  Remember Easter?"  
  
"Ah."  
  
"Yeah.  And it's not even March yet."  
  
Kid hummed thoughtfully.  "I see the problem."  He raised his hands high in soft, curling movements.  "You don't know how long it takes to provision for so many thousands of people, much less injured and frightened children."  He turned slowly, until he faced the opposite direction and the monocled side of his head faced Jack, and brought his hands back down.  "We're scheduled to begin rescues at midnight on the International Date Line, the Tuesday after Easter.  To account for time zones."  
  
Jack blinked.  "That long?"  
  
"We'll need every second."  
  
And indeed, they did.  Jack found himself, over the next several weeks, drafted into the effort and almost constantly on the run.  His snow days failed, forecast blizzards passing by with scarcely a trace of snow as he hauled diapers and formula, bandages and medicines, entire truckloads of nonperishable food from the yeti kitchens -- granola bars, dried fruit, peanut butter, rice and pasta, jerky, chips, and that was just what Jack recognized -- sippy cups, bedding, clothes, and toys.  So. Many. Toys.  
  
They'd never have finished in time without the yeti.  But, finally, as the sun set Monday evening, Jack set one last teddy bear on the millionth freshly-made bed, and wandered out into the dimming Warren.  
  
Fireflies were starting to flicker in the deepest shadows under the trees, where North, Tooth, and Sandy waited, looking as jittery as Jack felt.  He joined them at the same time that Bunny did, shambling half-drunk with exhaustion and landing heavily on North's shoulder.  
  
"I make it?" he asked.  
  
"Da," North replied.  "We wait for Last Rescue now."  
  
Or, technically, the first.  Kid had arranged for Shin'ichi to bring the last of his solo rescues to the Warren, to be there when the bakeneko began streaming in with their own.  
  
Across the meadow, in the darkened arch of Bunny's front gate, something pale and tall moved.  "The wait is over," Kid announced, in a gentle stage murmur that carried easily across the glade.  He stepped forward, and behind him...  
  
"Spirit is woman?" North asked.  
  
The dark horse clopping delicately in Kid's wake was the same nightmare-black gelding, with blue fire for a mane and tail, but instead of a child, there was a black woman in a yellow Tinkerbell nightshirt huddled around something on its back.  Jack could just barely see the slender figure in her arms, the hooded blue overcoat far larger with only one small occupant.  
  
"No," Jack murmured, even as the other Guardians moved cautiously forward.  As they approached, eyes flicking between the stranger and her small, presumably traumatized bundle of child, she looked around, uncurling slowly as amazement drained away her fright.  
  
Kid lifted his arms, helped the woman stumble gracelessly off the horse, then did the same for a far more skillful Shin'ichi.  "Kaito..." Shin'ichi's young voice, thick with emotion, carried weakly to them.  "It's so beautiful."  
  
"Pretty!" the woman agreed.  North grunted in sudden shocked realization, but before he could say a word, the woman's eyes fell on them and she burst into tears.  
  
"Oh no, no, sweetheart--" Kid and Shin'ichi caught her as she crumpled to the ground, bawling.  "What is it?  It's okay, you're safe--"  
  
She scrubbed tears from her eyes, saw Bunny crouching next to her, reaching out, and wailed.  "I'm s-s-sooooorry!"  
  
"Stolen Easter eggs," Kid mouthed quickly over her shoulder.  
  
Bunny's ears went flat.  "Oh sheila, no," he breathed, as kindly as he had for Sophie all those years ago.  "No one's ever stolen my eggs.  Those were yours."  
  
"Your brother was wrong," Shin'ichi told her, hand passing through Bunny's shoulder when he set it on her broad, shivering back.  "He doesn't believe in the Easter Bunny, right?  So when he saw you had eggs, and he hadn't put them out... but he was wrong.  You didn't deserve to be punished.  You're a good girl."  
  
Tooth flittered a little closer to Jack.  "Jack, what...?" she whispered, bewildered.  "She's an adult, how can she see us?"  
  
"Mentally disabled," Jack replied just as quietly.  "Never stopped believing."  
  
"Oh!  Oh.  I..."  She deflated a little.  "I didn't know that could happen?  But I guess I wouldn't, I never see them after they lose their last baby tooth.  I..."  Her wings suddenly buzzed harshly.  "Jack, does that mean _that little boy is the rescuing spirit?!_ "  
  
North, Sandy, and Kid all glanced sharply up at her yelp.  Bunny's ears twitched, but he kept his attention on the woman still sniffling, curled between him and Shin'ichi... who, of course, didn't react at all.  
  
Kid and Jack shared a sober look, and Jack's fingers clenched around his staff under the weight of Kid's clear _Do you want to take this, or shall I?_  
  
Jack would have to.  Kid couldn't speak without Shin'ichi noticing right now.  
  
"He doesn't believe in magic," Jack said, the words rasping in his throat.  "The only Wonder I've ever seen him have is 'I wonder who killed this person'.  The only Hope, 'I hope I can save this one, and this one, and this one', and it never stops.  I don't know if he has Dreams.  I'm pretty sure he doesn't have much Memory, the way he doesn't seem to realize it's been more than sixty years."  Jack paused, swallowed.  "I can barely sense anything from him.  The only Joy he has is a sort of... tainted satisfaction when he rescues another child."  The tiniest crook of his finger brought the Wind ruffling gently through Shin'ichi's hair and clothes, and Jack inhaled and swallowed again, running his tongue around the unpleasant aftertaste.  "He hates--" yes, that was the taste, a bitter resigned hatred "-- hates that his job's necessary at all."  
  
Sandy finished counting on his fingers, then sent up a shocked !! sign.  
  
Tooth, glancing over at him, said, "But... but Jack, that's all of us."  She wrung her hands.  "I thought we covered pretty much everything?  He's still a child, he needs to believe in _something_ \--"  
  
"Fear," Kid said.  
  
Shin'ichi blinked up at Kid, unwittingly mirroring the rest of the Guardians.  "What?"  
  
"Here," Kid corrected, tugging the woman -- half-asleep but still whimpering a little -- to her feet.  "It's been a long day, right?  And it might be only twilight here, but it's way past someone's bedtime.  There's a room just the other side of that tree," he added, pointing.  "How about you put her to bed while I find you something to eat?"  
  
" _Jack_ ," Tooth snapped as Shin'ichi obeyed, Bunny hovering indecisively before letting them go.  
  
"Look, I don't know, okay?" Jack shot back.  "He believes in Kid--"  
  
"I knew him when we were human, it's not really about believing," Kid pointed out.  
  
"-- and that kids need rescued sometimes, you don't need rescues from things that aren't terrifying--"  
  
"Evil," Kid supplied.  "Shin'ichi believes wholeheartedly in fear and in evil.  And that he can stop the latter, at least, one person at a time."  
  
Bunny straightened.  "Right then.  He planning to take on Pitch anytime soon?  Because I don't see that working out well for him at all, mate."  
  
Kid paused.  Stared.  Then, he slowly turned that incredulous look on Jack.  _Seriously?_ that look asked.  Jack shrugged.  "Oooookay," Kid murmured.  To Bunny, he smirked and said, "I can pretty much guarantee that Shin'ichi's not going to go fighting this Pitch guy.  Aaaaaand hold that thought," he finished, before breaking into mist and reappearing a few meters away, then starting to walk back towards them.  A picnic basket melted into existence over his arm just before Shin'ichi returned to the clearing.  
  
"Kid," he said, eyes huge and painfully young, "What _is_ this place?  I... there's hobbit holes?  Everywhere?  And I can't see where the light's coming from, there's no sky...?"  
  
"Just cloudy, Meitantei."  He spread out a checkered picnic blanket that appeared in his hands with a soft pop.  "Come, take care of yourself while you have a moment."  Shin'ichi's overcoat landed on the grass, and Jack winced at the other Guardians' gasps as Kid tucked a dazed Shin'ichi under his arm and began plying him with some sort of complicated-looking soup.  
  
Jack had seen Shin'ichi without the coat.  It made him look easily twice as broad as he really was.  
  
'No pity,' Kid mouthed at them, levelling a hard look over Shin'ichi's head.  'Go away.'  
  
"Come on."  Jack hooked his shepherd's crook obediently around Bunny's neck.  "Let's go help welcome kids in."  And he pulled Bunny away, North and Tooth following, the latter casting worried glances over their shoulders.  
  
"Gack-- mate-- geroff-- _Jack_!"  
  
Jack let Bunny go once they were out of earshot and hidden by the trees.  "Look," he said, tapping at North's shoulder to get that man's attention too.  "I'm pretty sure this is the first Kid's had Shin'ichi to himself in... well... _ever_."  He'd never seen the two of them face off, though he'd spotted Kid chortling over a headline Jack couldn't read once.  Shin'ichi had looked about nine in the picture.  "Now I mean it, let's go help with the kids.  They've gotta be arriving already."  
  
And so they were.  All thoughts of interrogating Jack seemed to vanish once they reached the far end of the Warren, where ghostly cats were misting in through the shadows.  The smallest, carrying infants by their dirty blankets and onesies, were very nearly the size of kindergarteners; larger ones like ponies had half-asleep elementary schoolers on their backs, riding in ones and twos.  
  
The first one Jack lifted off a pony-like cat's back needed new underwear.  He swallowed bile, but dug gamely into the supply bins with a gentle smile.  
  
After that, the hours drained away in an unending stream of soothing words, bandages and clean clothes, diapers and bottles, teddy bears and new beds, and dabbing away tears.  
  
Dawn had long since broken, the grass gone dark where little feet and large paws had stamped away dew, when Bunny came stumbling over to Jack with his ears twitching nervously and a Chinese toddler on his hip.  "Hey, Frostbite?  I don't feel so good--"  
  
Jack barely caught the toddler when Bunny shuddered, went limp, and shrank down to Jack's size.  
  
He stared.  
  
"Bo hao," the toddler told him solemnly, pointing at the lanky, newly shortened Bunny.  
  
"Not good at all," Jack agreed.  
  



End file.
